“When I first set eyes on it, it struck me as a drop dead gorgeous house and apart from a few changes I made when I moved here 40 years ago, it had not had much work done to it,” says Tony, one of four Samuelson brothers who worked in the famous family film camera business. “I figured that I owed it to the house. Living here has been a privilege. I wanted to put something back, to bring it into the present century and make it fit for another two to come.”

The Manor House was one of only three buildings in the village to be listed when the system was introduced in the 1950 – the others were St Andrew’s Church and Garden House. The recent programme of works required no less than five listed building consents. With the help of surveyor Antony Tight, a specialist in listed buildings, the Samuelsons reconstructed the roof, rainwater gutters and the five chimneys to modern standards. A new vehicular access and parking area was created at the front of the house, paved with magnificent granite sets brought down from the North of England that have a history going back to the industrial revolution.  Even so, the family continues to come and go through the scullery on the other side of the house as they have done since moving there. “There were some difficult decisions,” admits Tony. “Like whether we should roof the new dormers and line the new gutters with felt that would last 50 years or lead that would last centuries. Posterity won.”

Before Tony Samuelson bought the 19-room (“counting anything bigger than a cupboard”) house in 1962, it was owned by Doris Redding, who was given it as a wedding present in 1922 by her father Sir Charles Allom, an eminent interior decorator who worked on Buckingham Palace and the Frick Mansion in New York among other places, and who lived at Fairlawn further along Totteridge Lane.

During the Second World War the iron railings that fronted the house were removed, sent to aid the war effort and replaced with a hedge. Tony Samuelson restored the railings. During the refurbishment he found, stuffed down beside a window in the attic, a letter from the commanding officer in charge of the regiment in which a young lieutenant Redding served during the War, informing his parents that he was missing in action.

Unlike many people of his age – he is 77 – Tony has no intention of downsizing. Instead, to pay for the makeover, he has taken out a life time mortgage with the Pru. “I have too much junk here,” he says of the house, which is decorated in a mixture of styles from Victorian to Art Deco and is crammed with books, family photographs and bricabrac accumulated in the course of an eventful life.

One room is currently filled with tray upon tray of seedlings which Tony is growing as he prepares his entries for the Chelsea Flower Show and the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show this summer. For someone who admits never having even been to a flower show, being selected to stage gardens at both the UK’s most prestigious events is an extraordinary double achievement. We wish him luck!